This case arises from claims brought by Falun Gong practitioners who suffered torture in China at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. The torture victims alleged that executives of an American technology company, Cisco Systems, designed, built, and sold a tailor-made software system to the Chinese Communist Party to facilitate its surveillance, capture, and torture of the Falun Gong adherents. A putative class of Falun Gong practitioners sued Cisco Systems and its executives in the Northern District of California. As relevant here, one plaintiff brought claims against company executives under the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA), which imposes liability on a person who “subjects an individual to torture.” The executives moved to dismiss, arguing that the TVPA does not cover those who merely aid and abet someone else’s commission of torture; rather, it is limited only to those who commit torture or who are responsible for their subordinates’ acts of torture. The district court dismissed the TVPA claim, but the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit unanimously reversed, holding that the TVPA does impose liability on those who aid and abet torture. The defendants then petitioned the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case.

In March 2026, the Constitutional Accountability Center filed an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs. Our brief makes two principal points.

First, the plain meaning of the TVPA covers those who aid and abet torture. As our brief explains, dictionary definitions of the verb “subjects” and the ordinary usage of that term demonstrate that “subjects” means to “cause” a person to “undergo” or be “exposed” to something. Indeed, both the Supreme Court and Congress have used the verb “subjects” in contexts that clarify that one may “subject” another to something without directly inflicting the underlying act or being responsible for it. That understanding is also confirmed by uses of “subjects” in media sources contemporaneous to the passage of the TVPA. Because one who aids and abets torture has “caused” the victim to suffer torture, he “subjects” the victim to it within the meaning of the TVPA.

Second, our brief explains that the Supreme Court has never adopted a free-floating “magic words” rule requiring Congress to use the terms “aid” and “abet” before a civil statute may impose aiding-and-abetting liability. The defendants rely on a case called Central Bank of Denver to support that contention, but our brief explains why that argument is wrong. It also explains that such a magic-words rule would raise serious separation-of-powers concerns because it would distort the ordinary meaning of a given statute and permit judges to elevate judge-made technicalities over the plain meaning of a statute’s text. That tramples on Congress’s authority to make the law and empowers judges to effectively rewrite the text of statutes that Congress enacted.

In June 2026, the Supreme Court held that the TVPA does not impose liability upon those who aid and abet torture. In dissent, Justice Sotomayor echoed language from our amicus brief and cited cases we highlighted to make the point that the majority had effectively created a “magic-words test” by requiring Congress to “incant” the words “aid and abet” to impose civil aiding and abetting liability. Also echoing arguments laid out in our brief, Justice Sotomayor recognized that the statutory text interpreted in Central Bank of Denver was narrower than the TVPA’s language, making that case inapposite. While Justices Kagan and Jackson concurred in the majority’s holding on the TVPA question, they, too, agreed with Justice Sotomayor that the majority had incorrectly extended Central Bank to impose a “magic-words” test for civil aiding and abetting liability.